Introverted Reader

Weekly Update for July 13, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. She's taking a bit of personal leave so I'm also linking to Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. This was a fairly quiet week. Yesterday morning, I volunteered for a local nonprofit that accepts book donations and in turn donates them to other nonprofits, like women's shelters or schools, and gets them into the hands of people who don't really have access to books. They do great work! In the afternoon, one of my good friends drove up to visit and we had a lot of fun goofing around. We even found a photo booth and had our pictures taken! I haven't done that in years! Posted: Review: The 100-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson, translated by Rod Bradbury, read by Steven Crossley--4 Stars Review: The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene--3.5 Stars Read: The Story of Land and Sea by Katy Simpson Smith I listened to about 30 minutes of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown and realized that I was never going to follow it in an audio format. I'll try again later in print. There was nothing wrong with the reading or the book, there were just too many names, places, and events for me to keep it straight by just listening to it. Currently Reading: Undaunted Courage: Meriwether Lewis, Thomas Jefferson, and the Opening of the American West by Stephen E. Ambrose--I've dragged this one out too long by just reading it before bed. This one will be my full-time print book until I finish it. How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer, read by Joshilyn Jackson Up Next: I requested Summer Knight…

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July 13, 2015

The Last Time I Saw Paris by Lynn Sheene: Book Review

Claire Harris is a New York socialite, throwing extravagant parties and softening up her husband's potential business partners for him. Her past comes back to haunt her one night and she flees to Paris on the eve on the German occupation to find an old lover. Their reunion doesn't go well and she finds herself working in a florist shop and reluctantly assisting the French Resistance. I'm not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, I did enjoy the book. I love almost any WWII novels and this is no exception. On the other hand, it was a bit too romance-y for me. It just couldn't quite make up its mind what it wanted to be. I can overlook romance--who doesn't love a good love story?--but when I'm suddenly hit with "Heat flooded her core," my eyes start rolling in my head and I start turning pages faster. "Can we please just get through this already?" To be fair, there were only a couple of those scenes but that was a couple too many for me. I can't put my finger on any examples of this, but I'm also left with the feeling that it needed one more good proofreading before it was published. It's not bad by any means, it could have just been a little more polished. I knew that the love story was going to center around Claire and Grey from their first meeting, so I did buy it. In retrospect though, I wish that part had been more fleshed out. Well, not that kind of fleshed out, but just the slow, getting-to-know-you part of things. Claire hates him at first, they meet a few times and she starts to change her mind, and then we're to the heated core. Quite a bit of time…

The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson: Book Review

Allan Karlsson impulsively leaves his nursing home by way of his bedroom window on the day of his 100th birthday. There was no real decision-making involved; it was just done. So there he is, on the run in his "pee slippers" (so called because 100-year-old men don't reliably miss their shoes in the bathroom) and no real destination in mind. His journey leads him to the bus stop, where he steals a suitcase and then travels by bus as far as his limited funds will take him. It gets crazier from there as he goes from a missing geriatric to a wanted murderer. In flashbacks, we read the story of Allan's life. He meets many, many world leaders during his time, influences world events, and makes a lot of friends in strange places. I try not to read review of books I'm reading too close to the time I start reading them. I don't want others' thoughts to influence my own review. But this title caught my eye and I'd never heard of it, so before I downloaded the audio from the library website, I had a quick look through the GoodReads reviews. I came across many people who compared this to Forrest Gump. I have to agree. But it's like, Forrest Gump to the nth degree. It's just crazy and hilarious. No drama with broken women here. I also have to compare it to the Jim Carrey movie, Yes Man. Allan is an agreeable sort of fellow and he'll do anything to help someone else out, whether it's saving General Franco's life during the Spanish Revolution or giving Stalin the secret to the atomic bomb. Indirectly, in that case. Stalin was one of the few people Allan met that he didn't actually care for. Anyway, his propensity to say…

Bookish Miscellany

Weekly Update for July 5, 2015

Welcome to my weekly update for July 5, 2015! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. She's taking a bit of personal leave so I'm also linking to Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. I hope all my fellow Americans had a great 4th of July and everyone else had an excellent weekend as well! My [...]

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July 5, 2015

My Ántonia by Willa Cather: Book Review

Young orphan Jim Burden is sent from Virginia to Nebraska to live with his grandparents. There is a Bohemian family on the train with him. None of them really speak English. They all get off at the same station in Black Hawk. It turns out that the family has just bought the farm next to Jim's grandparents. Neighbors are still far apart back in 1800s Nebraska but Jim still spends a lot of time with the Shimerda family, especially Ántonia, the oldest girl and closest to his age. As he watches Ántonia grow, he realizes that she has an indomitable spirit and admires her for it. I liked Ántonia. A lot. She's smart, feisty, hard-working, loving, and full of life. As she grew older, I got more worried for her. This is a classic after all. I expected it to take a Thomas Hardy turn. I was pleasantly surprised when it didn't. More than that, Ántonia embodied the American immigrant spirit. Her family starts out living in a dugout, basically a cave dug into the earth. They were comfortable back home in Bohemia so this is an adjustment for them, but rather than complain about it, as her mother does, Ántonia does her best to help raise the family out of that hole in the ground. She has setbacks of course, and people talk about her and her unfamiliar ways, but she just keeps doing what needs to be done. Ántonia lives in the town of Black Hawk for a while and becomes friends with a group of other immigrants. The wider group shows just how much these new settlers have to offer the country. Some become successful businesswomen, others become farm wives, some are content to just keep working in hotels and laundries. They all make some kind of…

The Places in Between by Rory Stewart: Book Review

Rory Stewart walked through India, Pakistan and Nepal in 2002, a time that was very unstable given the events of 2001 and the subsequent war. He decided that he wanted to walk through the heart of Afghanistan as well. He met with a lot of bureaucracy, but he was eventually given permission to undertake his journey on the condition that several soldiers accompany him. He sets out across Afghanistan in winter, towering mountains and layers of snow between him and his final destination of Kabul. I was a little disappointed in this and I'm having a hard time putting my finger on why, exactly. I think I expected more interaction with people? He's on foot and relies on the kindness of strangers for shelter and food. It's not like there are Holiday Inns on every street corner in Afghanistan. Heck, for that matter, there aren't even any streets to form corners in the rural areas he travels through. Just spending a night or two in one place, I felt like I didn't get a good sense of what the average people were really like. Which is kind of stupid to say. People are people. Afghans are like people everywhere--mean or kind, religious or not, apathetic or passionate. The one thing they are is crushingly poor. The country has been at war for so long, and I believe there's been a terrible drought that has dried up everything, so there's no chance to grow crops or lead a normal life. Anyway, I guess I didn't get a feel for what an average day in the life of an average Afghan is really like. Mr. Stewart mostly saw other people at night, when they'd settled in the house for what little dinner they could scrape together. What do they do with their…

Bookish Miscellany

Weekly Update for June 29, 2015

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. She's taking a bit of personal leave so I'm also linking to Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. Our dreadful heat finally broke this weekend. It's been beautiful and right around 80 degrees, which is perfect for me! My husband and I spent most of the [...]

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June 29, 2015

I Am One of You Forever by Fred Chappell: Book Review

Jess, his mom, dad, grandmother and farmhand/adoptive brother, Johnson, live a quiet life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina. They farm, visit with relatives, play some baseball, and get up to a whole lot of no good, as my grandmother would say. Jess's dad is a mischief-maker. He just can't help it. Johnson and Jess adore him and follow his lead in everything. Whether it's Halloween tricks or trying to find out exactly how long Uncle Gurton's beard really is, they are always up to something. I laughed so hard reading this! My poor husband might as well have read it with me; I read all the good parts out loud to him anyway, and they were all good parts. He's not much of a reader and it just blows his mind when I start guffawing out of the blue at something I've read, but even he let out a few chuckles as I read to him. I read and enjoyed Brighten the Corner Where You Are by this author several years ago. It was funny and then all of a sudden it had this serious message. It was also written from a child's point of view, so the kid's missing what's going on but the older reader really sees it. Well played, Mr. Chappell. I waited for something to come out and hit me in this book too. It didn't really happen. There was a bit in there about the cost of war, and I guess you could even say something about what soldiers in WWII were fighting to protect, but mostly this felt like a bunch of good family stories of the sort that tend to take on a life of their own. I feel like I write this every time I read a well-written book…

The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George: Book Review

Jean Perdu is a broken man, not really living his life but only existing. His one great love left him twenty years ago and he's never moved on. He puts together gigantic puzzles in his spartan apartment and sells books on his book barge, The Literary Apothecary. He knows exactly the right book to sell to the lovelorn when they enter his shop, but he doesn't know how to fix his own life. When Catherine, fresh out of a devastating marriage, moves in across the hall, they both sense that they could have a real, lasting relationship, a relationship that neither of them is ready for. In an act of desperation, Jean casts his barge off into the Seine, bestselling author Max in tow, and heads off into the sunset, or at least the south of France, to seek peace and healing. I truly wanted to like this more than I did. I read a couple of reviews, thought it sounded like the perfect book for me, and went to request it on Netgalley. It was good, not great, and in the month or so since I finished it, I've largely forgotten it. My biggest problem was the title. I estimate that 2/3 of the book takes place outside of Paris. So now it's The Little France Bookshop. That's misleading but still, no real complaints here. I haven't been to France but it's high on my wishlist. And while quite a bit of the story does take place in the bookshop or around books, it wasn't quite as much as I expected. Instead of a love story to books, or a love story revolving around books, I felt like it was more of a love story with a few books thrown in. That's not quite fair because there were a…

Bookish Miscellany

Weekly Update for June 21, 2015

Welcome to my weekly update for June 21, 2015! It's Monday! What Are You Reading? is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. She's taking a bit of personal leave so I'm also linking to Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer. Happy Father's Day to all the dads out there! I got two reviews written and posted last week. That's about [...]

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June 21, 2015